"...when it is prophesied that no man can defeat me, I will keep in mind the increasing number of non-traditional gender roles."

A character receives a prophecy or curse of the form "X cannot happen until Y," where Y is seemingly impossible. X is frequently (but not always) the character's death or defeat.

Of course, Y ends up happening somehow, usually through some trick of wording or a loophole, with X promptly following.

Over-reliance on this phrase by the baddie usually leads to a delicious Oh Crap moment. It often involves a Eureka Moment, followed by the newly minted Magnificent Bastard drawing his sword and Cutting the Knot. Macbeth met his end at the hands of a man "born" via C-section, for example.

A subtrope of Prophecy Twist and Double Meaning; compare Prophetic Fallacy. Can be a form of False Reassurance. For some other instances of impossible conditions being met, see Impossible Task and Engagement Challenge. For when condition Y isn't really fulfilled but a half-assed excuse is used to justify X happening anyway, see Metaphorically True.

_________________________."...or am I a butterfly dreaming she's a woman?"

LOL Great line from the script!...when the dwarves invite themselves to Bilbo's dinner at "BagEnd"...

A dwarf walks passed Bilbo wiping a dish with a scrap of cloth(?)Bilbo snatches it out of his hand grumbling;"That's a DOILY... not a Dish Rag!"The dwarf mildly protests, "but it's full of holes!"and Bilbo hisses, "It's called "Crochet!"

Only to be miss-heard by another dwarf walkingpassed him ...smiling pleasantly & chiming in;"AYE! Lovely Game!...if you've got the balls for it.."

LOL gotta luv the Aussie sensaumma when it comes to the LotR script writers!

_________________________."...or am I a butterfly dreaming she's a woman?"

For some reason, Bilbo's quiet life in the shire and their little houses under little hillocks were fascinating to me. I was actually quite glad to see a lot of shire scenes in the first movie - so I guess I should be glad they have stretched things out to 3 movies.

The Hobbit was my first extensive exposure to British English and British things in general. I actually thought Tolkien made up all those British spellings (hey I was 11) just to make the book feel more fantastic. He actually did make up a lot of words though like eleventy, etc. I also though shires etc. were something made up by Tolkien just for Hobbits to live in.

In both movies, the Shire scenes were necessaryFirst and foremost, it's where both books begin:""An Unexpected Journey" in "the Hobbit", and"The Unexpected Party" in the LotR ("Fellowship")

...and to set the scene for establishing thepastoral nature of Hobbits, that play againsttheir bravery that leads to saving MiddleEarth.

Isn't THIS Adorable? A Hobbit Bonsai!

BTWif you haven't seen "The Making Of" videosAll the Scenes from both The Hobbit & The LotRare entirely real! It was filmed entirely in New Zealand.. and all the mountains, glaciers,and forests (including those enormous trees)are all very much real! Even Rivendell:)

They built the buildings, and interior scenery,but when it came to The Shire, they found asuitable scene, (including The Tree and Hill atop "BagEnd" landscaped it, returned a yearlater to trim the lawn and hedges, inserted aRound Door and began filming.

_________________________."...or am I a butterfly dreaming she's a woman?"

The Hobbit was my first extensive exposure to British English and British things in general. I actually thought Tolkien made up all those British spellings (hey I was 11) just to make the book feel more fantastic. He actually did make up a lot of words though like eleventy, etc. I also though shires etc. were something made up by Tolkien just for Hobbits to live in.

It was never established that MiddleEarth hasany relationship with England... it's more orless an entire world unto itself that existedlong before man ever crawled out of the caves.

If you read the Silmarilian, it goes into moredetail about The very first beings, the EarthSpirits (One of which is Tom Bombadil) who existed even before Wizards, or the High Elves.

...but no, it was more than the whimsicalinvention of a single writer (Prof Tolkien)Tolkien was a professor of antiquities, Ibelieve, @ Cambridge who specialized in oldewritings... The Runes & Elvish-style script,for instance, and very much real... ...and they follow an actual grammar and setpronunciation... which Tolkien used as a basisto create an entire highly detailed world,that became so complete that it became almostentirely believable.

Xplain's use of MacNews, AppleCentral and AppleExpo are not affiliated with Apple, Inc. MacTech is a registered trademark of Xplain Corporation. AppleCentral, MacNews, Xplain, "The journal of Apple technology", Apple Expo, Explain It, MacDev, MacDev-1, THINK Reference, NetProfessional, MacTech Central, MacTech Domains, MacForge, and the MacTutorMan are trademarks or service marks of Xplain Corp. Sprocket is a registered trademark of eSprocket Corp. Other trademarks and copyrights appearing in this printing or software remain the property of their respective holders.

All contents are Copyright 1984-2010 by Xplain Corporation. All rights reserved. Theme designed by Icreon.